My Wedding Day with Jenny Egan: Our canoeist friends made a paddle arch for us to walk through

We had lots of international athlete friends from the UK, Denmark, Austria and Canada with us on the day

Jenny Egan and Jon Simmons on their wedding day. Pictures: Jenny McCarthy

We got married on November 20, 2021. Jon and I both represent our countries as canoeists, and our competition season typically runs from April through to September. A lot of our friends who would be coming to the wedding are also international canoeists, so it really appealed to us to have a winter wedding because we knew people would be able to enjoy themselves more.

We had the ceremony and the party after in BrookLodge & Macreddin Village in Wicklow. We’d been looking around at wedding venues and when we went to BrookLodge we felt what I can only describe as a warming embrace from the staff there.